Sicko Documentary Essay

465 Words2 Pages

The documentary "Sicko", displays the ugly truth behind the health care business in the United States of America. The documentary goes in further explanation on how the lives of millions of Americans are affected by insurance, or lack of it. The film-maker, having the ability to shape the public 's view on insurance, does a great job using propaganda tricks to sway people into his direction of thinking. The filmmaker does this in two ways: setting up testimonials to prove their points and tabloid thinking. Testimonials were used in this documentary to sell the idea: health insurance businesses only care for profit, and getting their money back. The film-maker supports this idea by going into the lives of those who do not have insurance, and those who do have insurance. In those who didn 't have insurance, the film-maker tries to get the viewer to slip into the fallacy of ad verecundiam. In further explanation, the producer wants the viewer to feel sorry for those affected. As for those who had health insurance, they used …show more content…

Insurance businesses are just like any other business: they seek ways to maximize their profits and expand their business. The producers spearheading the documentary certainly didn 't want the insurance business to appear like a normal one. They set out to settle the dispute in their argument through tabloid thinking. The fallacy of hasty generalization ties in to this because they used too small of a sample size to prove the statements of their testimonials. The words of their testimonials were that insurance businesses are: always looking for a way out, and refusing to help those with medical conditions. Furthermore, their testimony might be accurate and correct but the hasty generalization is drawn out because the conclusion cannot be made with such a small sample group. Thus, leading the consumer to fall into a fallacious reasoning and helping the producer influence their opinions or actions by appealing to their emotions or